'The Innkeepers' review: Welcome to our dead and breakfast

(MAGNET)Pat Healy, left, and Sarah Paxton really should stay out of that basement in "The Innkeepers."

Although it’s produced many different arthouse projects (including the great drama “Wendy & Lucy”) tiny Glass Eye Pix has made its biggest
impression in the horror genre, and by doing something radical.

It’s gone traditional.

Chainsaw-wielding maniacs, vivisecting sadists – they don’t have a big place in their movies. What the company does make room for are Hammer-ish period pieces (“I Sell the Dead”) and even, occasionally, poetic Val-Lewtonish style (“The Wendigo”).

“The Innkeepers” is their latest, directed by emerging horror auteur Ti West, who sticks to the tricks he tried in his last film for Glass Eye, the `70s-inspired, eerily effective “House of the Devil.”

There’s an attractive young woman in peril. There’s a strange noise at the end of long, empty hallway. Curious, she slowly walks down to investigate. And walks. And walks. Until…

It’s not exactly a new technique, but it worked well there. The heroine was alone, and the pacing was so deliberate, the slowness itself became scary. By ignoring the usual rapid-fire edits of modern horror films, West kept audiences perpetually offbalance.

Unfortunately, it’s less successful in “The Innkeepers.” Once again we’ve got spooky noises late at night, but this time the young woman, the maid in a haunted hotel, has company – a geeky desk clerk and a couple of guests. The setting doesn’t have the first film’s quiet-as-the-grave solitude, and the gimmick has lost its novelty.

Add to that an even sketchier plot, and a nearly glacial schedule of scares – we’re a good hour into the film before we get anything much more than ghostly piano tinklings and a few rustlings in the basement – and it’s easy to feel a bit ripped off.

The film has a nice score by Jeff Grace, and West is still skilled at those long tracking shots up to mysteriously locked doors or padlocked cellars. Sara Paxton is sweet as the obligatory scream queen, and Collingswood’s Kelly McGillis – who was also in the studio’s “Stakeland” – adds some dignity to things as a mysterious guest.

But when the shocks do come, they’re too little to really reward the time required to get to them. “The Innkeepers” may have some of the retro charm of a boardwalk spookshow. But the ride is too long – and too few of the attractions seem to be up and running.

Ratings note: The film contains violence and strong language.

'The Innkeepers' (R) Magnet (100 min.)
Directed by Ti West. With Sarah Paxton, Kelly McGillis. Now playing in New York.
TWO AND A HALF STARS